Hopelessly Liberal’s readers are waterlogged after a deluge of hundred day assessments. As promised, here is ours, but mercifully eschewing, with one exception, a listing and critique of major achievements and failures. Instead, for one day H.L. becomes a distillery, delivering the essence of Trump as POTUS, 100 proof and aged for one hundred and three days. […]

Hopelessly Liberal, like all widely read political/social commentaries, is gearing up for next week’s review of Donald Trump’s first hundred days. There is still time sister, so this is not that post or “those” because HL will post two – one “How’s he doing?” and the other an (Ed) Koch-like “How am I doing?” assessing the heuristic and predictive value in HL’s first 33 posts. […]

It’s unfortunate and dangerous for Democrats and liberals (there is some overlap) to be putting so much emphasis on the June 20 run-off election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district. The contest is for the seat vacated by Dr. Tom Price when he became President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services and Hopelessly Liberal’s favorite cabinet pick. The regret stems from too many eggs in one not especially welcoming basket, the modest resume of Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff and his likely Achilles. The fact that he doesn’t live in the district that he’s seeking to represent in Congress, wasn’t able to vote for himself in the round 1 contest held among 18 candidates on April 18, and his promise to relocate after his girlfriend concludes her [...]

Anyone can and is entitled to change their mind. Neil Young urged it and Ralph Waldo Emerson warned that “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin” of little ones – bringing to mine the thought that this president is possessed of a petty and easily distracted, if not small one. Whatever its size, the Trump mind and his foreign intervention doctrine could rationally evolve in just three days, from the position that Bashar al-Assad’s ouster was a matter for the Syrian people and would be a “silly” objective of American policy to attacking Assad’s Shayrat airbase and comparing his war atrocities with Hitler’s – the one from Austria, not Boston. […]

For post-Trump America to emerge mostly intact, which is likely but not certain, we must walk and chew gum at the same time. Support or opposition for the president’s act of war against the government of Syria shouldn’t eliminate or even defer opposition to all the other stuff that’s happening and not. […]

Trump’s presidency has already induced writers for television series like Homeland and Billions to incorporate Trumpian themes into their scripts. Serious artistic interpretations of this national crisis, that history will mark among America’s most perilous, may come in time. Until that happens, there will be a cottage industry searching for scholarship and art that predicted and explained the coming (now come) disaster. Nostradamus must have, since his million vaguely worded prognostications certainly included one for Trump as well as one for the election of Hillary. […]

Admit it, I have. More than a few times in the last several months you have thought “I hope when TrumpCare passes, his supporters lose their ObamaCare policies and experience how little is covered under their new health insurance, if any.” Then the mind conjured a map and honed in on the West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, axis of self-inflicted injury. Right after that an angel admonished that these thoughts were evil, mean spirited and that we must wish them the very best of all possible outcomes in this and every aspect of life with Trump. But then the instant rejoinder – “Trump and everything he touches must fail, to hasten his quick exit and prevent anyone or thing like him from happening again.” […]

We keep hearing and reading how polished, nimble and skillful Judge Gorsuch was in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. One NPR reporter even likened him to God – at least with respect to voice – that SHE either must have heard or assumes to be male. This despite the Judge’s annoyed response to a Senator Franken question, with “I’m not God.” […]

Like many liberals and conservatives, your blogger is a longstanding and card carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union and contributor of money and sweat toward its efforts. I constantly tell my civil liberties class how often the ACLU was and is a plaintiff (and sometimes the only one) challenging government infringement of civil liberties and civil rights protected by the United States Constitution. That is what is generally understood, and how the ACLU has heretofore defined “civil liberties” and “civil rights” – those freedoms granted or protected in the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th and 15th, post-Civil War, constitutional amendments. […]

The reflexive but understandable assumption is that most of President Trump’s personnel moves involve partially or wholly corrupt motives. However, criticism of his recent firing of United States Attorney Preet Bharara is much ado about nothing. Indeed, most noteworthy in this departure was the posturing of the Manhattan-based head federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. The U.S. Attorneys, one for each of 94 territories carved by statute, effectively serve at the president’s pleasure. Technically, the Attorney General’s, but we know about Jeff Session’s fierce integrity and independence. Much has been made, but it is of little moment, that Trump changed his mind after earlier asking Bharara to stay in his post. The fact that Bharara was not singled out, but one of [...]

About Lloyd

Lloyd is a litigator and author whose work in antitrust and civil liberties law and poor people’s advocacy in and opposed to government involves many important, controversial and heavily reported legal, political and business trends in America from the late 1960s to the present.